Abstract: This article describes the move in mental health from institutional care to community arrangements. It draws on international literature and New Zealand health policy, which gives increased emphasis to the role of the primary health care sector in responding to mental health issues. These issues include the need for health promotion, improved detection and treatment of mild to moderate mental illness, and provision of mental health care to some of those with severe mental illness who traditionally receive care in secondary services. These developments challenge specialist mental health nurses to develop new roles which extend their practice into primary health care. In some parts of New Zealand this process has been under way for some time in the form of shared care projects. However developments currently are ad hoc and leave room for considerable development of specialist mental health nursing roles, including roles for nurse practitioners in primary mental health care.

Abstract: This article describes the implementation of a nurse-led, dedicated support network and service for children with a diagnosis of retinoblastoma and their families. Nurses with an interest in retinoblastoma at an Auckland Ophthalmology Department realised that the service provided was not meeting the needs of patients and families, particularly since the numbers had increased over the past two years. This article outlines the development of a cost-effective approach that improved the service.

Abstract: This article describes two interprofessional learning modules offered by the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland to undergraduate medicine, nursing and pharmacy students. The modules, 'Maori Health“ and ”Patient Safety", have a focus on quality improvement in healthcare and are used to bring together students for a shared learning programme.The specific dimensions of healthcare quality covered in the programme are: patient safety, equity, access, effectiveness, efficacy and patient-centeredness.

Abstract: This thesis reviews the role of primary health care nurses, who have an opportunity to play a unique role in teaching, touching and empowering families with newly discharged pre-term babies. Birth of a baby earlier than 37 weeks gestation ushers in a period of uncertainty and stress for parents. Uncertainties may centre on whether their infant will survive and what ongoing growth and developmental issues their infant will face.

Abstract: Based on qualitative research conducted in New Zealand and the Western Isles with rural primary care nurses and Family Health Nurses respectively, this thesis explores the ways that nurses construct flexible generalist professional identities that challenge traditional inter and intra-professional boundaries. Rhetoric of 'crisis' is often utilised to raise political awareness of the problematic, but in fact, rural general practitioner recruitment and retention has been documented for about a hundred years. For about the same length of time nurses have been providing primary health care services in rural and remote places, often working alone. In the New Zealand case, rural primary care nurses negotiate the boundaries between nursing and medicine, those within nursing itself, and also those between nursing a paramedic work. Nurses perform this boundary work by negotiating self-governing 'appropriate' and 'safe' professional identities. In the Western Isles case, the introduction of the newly developed role of Family Health Nurse serves to highlight the problematic nature of inserting an ostensibly generalist nursing role beyond the rural.

Abstract: When the New Zealand Nursing Council introduced the nurse practitioner as a new level of nurse in 2001, the opportunity arose for the introduction of primary health care nurse practitioners into the rural practice arena in this country. This dissertation explores the influences on the development of rural nursing in the last decade in New Zealand including the role of the Centre for Rural Health in advancing rural nursing education, as well as the impact the shortage of health professionals in rural New Zealand has had on the development of the rural primary health care nurse practitioner concept. For pioneering primary health care nurse practitioner roles to be successfully implemented in rural communities in New Zealand, several challenges need to be faced; the creation of roles and employment opportunities, community acceptance of the role, medical and nursing acceptance of the role and the establishment of independent nurse prescribing within the constraints imposed by current legislation. The dissertation explores the current literature in an attempt to offer solutions to the identified challenges. With the creation of primary health care nurse practitioner roles and the establishment and acceptance of these roles in rural communities, a new mode of health service delivery in rural New Zealand will begin.

Abstract: The aim of the study was to determine the practice of nurses employed in integrated care projects in New Zealand from late 1999 to early 2001. Integrated care was a major health reform strategy that emphasised primary health care as a means to improve service provision between the health sectors. An investigation of nurses' practice sought to determine the extent to which primary health care principles had been adopted in practice, as a comprehensive primary health care approach has been advocated globally in the management of chronic conditions; the leading cause of disability throughout the world and the most expensive problems faced by health care systems. The philosophical basis of the research was postpositivism. The study employed a quantitative non-experimental survey design because it allowed numeric descriptions of the characteristics of integrated care projects to be gained for the purpose of identifying nurses' practice. The unit of inquiry was the integrated care project, and 80 comprised the study population. Data were obtained on projects from expert informants (n=27) by telephone survey using a structured interview questionnaire developed by the researcher. Data obtained from interviews were statistically analysed in two stages. First, data were produced to comprehensively describe the characteristics of integrated care projects and nurses practice. The 'Public health interventions model' was used as a framework to analyses the interventions (activities) and levels of population-based practice of nurses. Following this, the social values embedded in nurses' practice were determined using 'Beattie's model of health promotion' as a framework for analysis. A strong association was found between nurses' practice in projects and strategies used in integrated care, such as information sharing, guideline development and promotion, and case management, and projects with an ethnic focus, low income focus, chronic condition focus, and well-health focus. Whilst nurses undertook interventions most frequently at the individual practice level they were also strongly associated with the small proportion of interventions that were undertaken at the community level. The majority of interventions by nurses reflected the health promotion value of health persuasion, indicating a paternalist and individual-oriented philosophy. Nurses were engaged in two interventions that indicated a collective-oriented philosophy – coalition building and community development, the latter reflecting health promotion values of negotiation, partnership and empowerment. The study demonstrated that nurses' practice in projects was predominantly centred on individual-focused population-based practice suggesting the need for a framework to assist nurses to transition their practice to include more activity at the community and systems levels. Without a reorientation of practice, nurses will remain limited in their ability to achieve health gains for populations. In response to this conclusion, and drawing on research results and reviewed literature, a new model, The 'Primary Health Care interventions model' was constructed. Recommendations include advocacy for the acceptance of the model by the health funder, professional nursing bodies, health organisations, educational institutions, nurses, communities, and individuals.